The 4-foot-10 forward is usually the smallest player on the field, and those who haven’t seen her play assume she doesn’t have a lot of strength.

Rest assured she has plenty of muscle.

Mirsky boomed a 25-yard shot into the upper left corner in the fifth minute and that ignited the Hawks’ 6-2 rout of West Chicago on Monday night.

The victory, which came on the opening day of West Chicago’s Ladycat Invitational, avenged a 4-0 loss to the Wildcats on March 25.

“I think we were just more confident as a team,” Mirsky said. “We had some new players playing with us and their best player was out, so that gave us more confidence because we knew we could use that to our advantage.”

West Chicago (5-8-2) played without its two best players. Senior striker Kayla Kirkwood, who leads the team with 14 goals and 10 assists, was serving the first game of a two-game suspension for a red card ejection plus accumulation of yellow cards. She notched three assists in the first meeting between the two teams.

The Wildcats also missed junior midfielder Stephanie Mata, whose father is seriously ill. Mata’s veteran presence is necessary for the Wildcats to control the midfield, which they were unable to do in this game.

Instead, Bartlett (9-6-1) dominated the middle behind junior Mariela Alba, who scored two goals and created havoc throughout the match to earn Chicagoland Soccer MVP of the Match honors.

“In the middle it’s very important to win the ball either in the air or a 50-50 tackle,” Alba said. “One of my main goals is to make sure I always get the ball. In my head it’s always, ‘You get the ball first and keep it.’

“I think I did very well with keeping the ball and making sure that I hit the outlets. I’m usually big on going to the wides and the gaps so the forwards can cut in and get into the box.”

The Hawks used their control of the midfield to put a lot of pressure on the Wildcats, especially after the first 30 minutes. The action was fairly even until then but the Hawks eventually wore out West Chicago, scoring on consecutive shots to take a 3-1 lead into intermission. At the break, Bartlett coach Ben Beary exhorted his team to keep up the pressure.

The Hawks did, scoring on their first two shots of the second half to put the game out of reach.

West Chicago coach Cesar Gomez was impressed with how the Hawks exacted their revenge.

“You could just see that Bartlett wanted it,” Gomez said. “You could just see it, especially when we were down, and they just pounded us.

“I give them 100 percent credit. What do you do when a team is down? Kick them. There’s no mercy here. They did what they had to do.”

The Wildcats won’t have to wait long to get another shot at the Hawks. The two teams play again next Tuesday.

But even if Kirkwood and Mata are in the lineup, the Wildcats will face an uphill battle if Bartlett continues its current hot streak. The Hawks have piled up 12 goals during a three-game winning streak.

“I feel like during practices a lot of us, we run through a lot of plays, per se,” Alba said. “We run through the motions and we know that in games it is not going to be perfect exactly, but during the last few games we’ve really worked on timing.

“That’s one of the things we struggled with at the beginning of the season is timing. Now we’ve gotten to know each other better and how each of us plays, the timing is so much better between all of us.”

Mirsky’s goal was the second of her career. Both have opened the scoring.

But West Chicago got the equalizer with 18:27 remaining in the first half when Jasmine Mendoza scored off an Alex Vega corner kick. That capped a 10-minute stretch which saw the Wildcats launch all five of their first-half shots.

Bartlett answered with an impressive display of long-distance shooting, which is another thing the Hawks have been working on.

Shannon Brohan ripped an 18-yard shot which was deflected into the crossbar by West Chicago goalkeeper Emma Gaggioli. Two Hawks rushed in and Sarah Jurek booted the rebound off the underside of the crossbar from three yards out to put her squad ahead 2-1.

Five minutes later, Brohan again triggered a scoring play, this time sending a long pass up the right wing to Alba, who roofed a 20-yard shot from just outside the top right corner of the box over the head of Gaggioli and inside the far post to make it 3-1.

“During practice we do a lot of shooting outside the box more now,” Alba said. “We used to do a lot of placement in the box, but now we’ve come outside the box because a lot of us do have that good long-shot range, so we took advantage of all the practice we do.”

The Hawks continued to do so in the second half as Jenna Noesen knocked in a cross from Melissa Gal with 34:52 to play. Alba made it 5-1 at the 30:31 mark when she headed home a pass from Gal and was denied a hat trick when Gaggioli rushed off her line and stole the ball from her on a breakaway just two minutes later.

“This is one of those games that we wanted real bad just because we knew that when we played them that first time, despite Kayla having a good game, we just did not play our best,” Beary said. “It was the second week of the season, we’ve got five freshmen and it took them some time to get acclimated to the varsity level.

“I think that West Chicago game was one of the first games where they understood the physicality of the varsity level, and they had to learn how to play that.

“But I think the biggest thing is our connection and chemistry on offense has been really good the last three games. The goals come in waves sometimes and we’ve been working hard. Our effort has been there, and we knew all along that we’re a good enough team to put up some good numbers and it’s finally starting to come.”

The Hawks never let off the accelerator against West Chicago, increasing the lead to 6-1 as Taylor Tomasek scored on a breakaway with 4:37 left. Carrigan Sablik had the assist.

The Wildcats answered just 25 seconds later when sophomore Katie Reitz made a strong run up the middle and scored her fourth goal of the season on a partial breakaway.Will that goal give the Wildcats a spark going forward?

“Hopefully,” Reitz said. “I wish it would have come a little bit earlier but you can’t change it. I thought that after we got that we picked it up.”

By then, of course, it was too late to alter the outcome.

“We had a little bit of a slow start, and after the first goal we kind of realized we had to pick it up,” Reitz said. “Last time we beat them 4-0 and we knew it wasn’t going to be the same. They had different players, we had less players and I think we were asleep a little bit in the beginning and then we started to pick it up, but we couldn’t keep them out of our end.”

Beary is hoping the Hawks can keep building momentum with the playoffs just two weeks away.

“Confidence starts building game after game, and I think that’s a big testament to the team and its ability to come together and play hard, especially when you know you’ve got a rematch game,” Beary said. “We played West Chicago three times last year and it took us to the third game to finally beat them, so we really wanted this one bad and we know we play them again next week.”

Before that, both teams have a busy week. Bartlett hosts Glenbard East in an Upstate Eight Valley match on Tuesday, while West Chicago hosts Larkin in Upstate Eight River action.

The tournament resumes Wednesday with West Chicago playing Glenbard North and Bartlett facing Downers Grove North, and concludes on Saturday as the Wildcats face Downers Grove North while Bartlett takes on Glenbard North. Glenbard North edged Downers Grove North 1-0 on penalty kicks in Monday’s other game.